Poetry by Theme Trivia

1. "Bess, the landlord's daughter, the landlord's black-eyed daughter" shrank into a corner of the train compartment. In the poem by Alfred Noyes, what was the profession of Bess's lover?

From Quiz Dark Encounter!

Answer: A highwayman

Alfred Noyes was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright, best known for his ballads "The Highwayman" and "The Barrel-Organ". "The Highwayman"mm tells the story of an unnamed highwayman who is in love with Bess, a landlord's daughter. Betrayed to the authorities by Tim, a jealous ostler, the highwayman escapes ambush when Bess sacrifices her life to warn him. Learning of her death, he dies in a futile attempt at revenge, shot down on the highway. In the final stanza, the ghosts of the lovers meet again on winter nights. The poem makes effective use of vivid imagery for the background and of repetitious phrases to create the sense of a horseman riding at ease through the rural darkness to a lovers' tryst or of soldiers marching down the same road to ambush him.

From Quiz Are You an Animal for Poetry?

Answer: Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) was a shy character who at one point declined the post of Poet Laureate. The poem "Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat" is a light-hearted poem about the drowning of a cat as it tries to hook a goldfish from a pond, and was written in memory of the death of his friend's cat, Selima.

From Quiz Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)

Answer: John Keats

From "I Stood Tip-Toe Upon a Little Hill" by John Keats 1795-1821. Keats was considered to be a key element in the Romantic Movement.

From Quiz Poems of Tribute

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

Whitman was a contemporary of Lincoln's. The poem was written after Lincoln's assassination.

From Quiz Poetry Places

Answer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

'Song of Hiawatha'.

From Quiz People in Poetry

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

'Nameless here for evermore'. Poe, of course, in 'The Raven'. He also wrote about women named Annabel Lee, Annie, Helen, etc.

From Quiz Love Poetry Part 1

Answer: Lord Byron

Lord Byron's full name was George Gordon Byron. He is considered by many to be the greatest letter writer of the English language. Some of his best known works are "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "Don Juan".

From Quiz Write Me a Love Song

Answer: Death

'Death, Be Not Proud' is from Donne's 'Holy Sonnets', published posthumously in 1633. The persona says that death isn't as mighty as people think. It's a slave to sickness, poison, and war. Death is nothing without its causes. John Donne is considered to be a metaphysical poet. They used metaphysical conceits, which are extended metaphors to explore a topic. Their poetry mainly focused on religion and love.

From Quiz Dark Encounter!

Answer: W.H. Auden

"Night Mail" was written in 1936 to accompany the documentary film of the same year and the same title. The film concerned a London, Midland, and Scottish Railway (LMS) mail train travelling from London to Scotland. Auden's poem was read toward the end of the film, set to music by Benjamin Britten. The rhythm of the film matches the train's movement, and a reader can almost hear the train chugging along as it brings the letters to the people of England and Scotland.

From Quiz Love, Poetically

Answer: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

All the options listed could be classed as love poems by Yeats. 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' describes how the writer would love to spread the richest cloths on the ground for his love to walk upon, but he is poor and can spread only his dreams for her. Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin, although his family moved to England only two years later. Yeats wrote the poem for Maude Gonne, with whom he fell in love, only to be rejected. Gonne inspired much of his poetry, possibly more than she would have done had she accepted his proposals of marriage.

From Quiz Are You an Animal for Poetry?

Answer: The Cow

Did you know that Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was mainly raised by his nanny Alison Cunningham? Because of this, he dedicated his collection of poems "A Child's Garden of Verses" to her. The collection included the poem "The Cow".

From Quiz Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)

Answer: Thomas Gray

From "Elegy Written In a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray 1716-1771. This poem was probably begun in 1742, following the death of his close friend Richard West, but it was not published until 1751.

From Quiz Poems of Tribute

Answer: John Keats

The poem which contains these lines was written by fellow romantic poet, Percy Shelley.

From Quiz Poetry Places

Answer: Matthew Arnold

'Dover Beach'. 'Ah, love, let us be true to one another ...'

From Quiz People in Poetry

Answer: Richard Lovelace

'Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage'.

From Quiz Love Poetry part 4

Answer: Edna ST. Vincent Millay

From Quiz Love Poetry part 3

Answer: John Gay

Actually this is a ballad he wrote. He is also a famous playwright. His best known play is the The Beggar's Opera. He is also famous for his Fables.

From Quiz Love Poetry Part 1

Answer: T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

From Quiz Write Me a Love Song

Answer: Astrophil and Stella

'Astrophil and Stella' was published posthumously in 1591, though it is thought that Sidney had been working on it since 1576. The work would probably not have been published before his death (he died of an infected gunshot wound in 1586) because the aristocracy did not write for money. Poetry was, however, circulated in manuscript form at Court. Many European sonnets were translated into English, but Sidney published the first ones to be originally written in English.

From Quiz Dark Encounter!

Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (13 November 1850 - 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885), written for children but also popular with their parents, includes such favourites as "My Shadow" and "The Lamplighter".

From Quiz Love, Poetically

Answer: Sir Thomas Wyatt

'Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever; Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more' are the opening lines of the poem. Wyatt was a member of the court of Henry VIII, and wrote poems in praise of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, including 'Whoso List to Hunt'. Wyatt was arrested in 1536 and charged with having committed adultery with Anne. He was fortunate to escape with his head, thanks to friends in high places, notably Thomas Cromwell, who secured his release. Sir Philip Sidney was a poet from the Elizabethan era, and Masefield was born in 1878. Tennyson was a poet from the nineteenth century.

From Quiz Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)

Answer: W.B. Yeats

From "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by W.B. Yeats 1865-1939. It is from the collection "The Wind Among the Reeds" published in 1899 when the poet's aim was to revive Irish folklore, legends and myths.

From Quiz Poems of Tribute

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

"There's Poe with his raven like Barnaby Rudge". The poem ends with the observation that "the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind". (Poe was not pleased.)

From Quiz People in Poetry

Answer: John Keats

'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'.

From Quiz Write Me a Love Song

Answer: It was written by a woman.

Lady Mary Wroth is one of few known writers of the era. 'From Pamphilia to Amphilanthus' consists of 103 sonnets published in 1621. Sonnets were out of fashion by the 17th century, so there is some speculation about why Lady Mary Wroth chose to write a sequence of them. She was related to Philip Sidney, so it could be an allusion to, or an ambition to achieve, his literary accomplishments. She also fell on hard times after her husband's death, and a scandal surrounding her illegitimate children, so she needed the money earned from selling her work.

From Quiz Dark Encounter!

Answer: "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes

Noyes was born in Wolverhampton, England, the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. When he was four, the family moved to Aberystwyth, Wales, where his father taught Latin and Greek. The Welsh coast and mountains were an early inspiration to Noyes. In 1898, he left Aberystwyth for Exeter College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself at rowing, but failed to get his degree because, on a crucial day of his finals in 1902, he was meeting his publisher to arrange publication of his first volume of poems, The Loom of Years (1902). From 1903 to 1913, Noyes published five additional volumes of poetry, among them "The Flower of Old Japan" (1903) and "Poems" (1904), which included one of his most popular poems, "The Barrel-Organ". His most famous poem, "The Highwayman", was first published in the August 1906 issue of "Blackwood's Magazine", and included the following year in "Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems". In a nationwide poll conducted by the BBC in 1995 to find Britain's favourite poem, "The Highwayman" was voted the nation's 15th favourite poem.

From Quiz Love, Poetically

Answer: Ulysses

In mythology, Calypso entranced Ulysses, or Odysseus, and held him for seven years, according to Homer's work 'Odyssey'. Mitchell's poem goes some way to explaining her hold on Ulysses, beginning 'My hands are tender feathers; They can teach your body to soar' and ending 'Lose yourself again; On the island of Calypso'. The lines in between you'll have to look up for yourself, as they would probably not pass the editing process. Adrian Mitchell was born in 1932 and began his career as a journalist, before turning to full time writing in the 1960s.

From Quiz Lines from Poems (Flowers and Trees)

Answer: William Shakespeare

From "Sonnet XVIII" by William Shakespeare 1564-1616. What is there to say about Shakespeare?

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